Shards: A Novel (28 page)

“And you didn’t give her the painting?”

“It’s my painting. I painted it.”

I glanced toward the jewelry store and saw Allison and William hug. It was a quickie, like spouses parting in the morning, before going to work.

“I guess that makes sense,” I told Bokal.

Allison walked over. She and Bokal exchanged some niceties; then Bokal left. Allison and I turned on one of the streets leading to Queen’s Park and I put my hand in my pocket, but she reached into it and took my hand again.

For the second time someone yelled her name from behind us, William. For the second time that night she said
shite
. For the second time I counted steps as they argued, this time in front of a pawnshop with electric guitars on display. For the second time I couldn’t just leave without her, despite my ambiguous status, despite the fear, despite myself.

They took longer this time, though, and when she finally came back she said:

“William and I are history.”

We walked by a pond and in between the wall-like hedges of some park, the mist meandering in their corners like spiderwebs in the wind. A playground was there, and a soccer field. She swung in the swing and I tried to go down the slide but only got my jeans wet.

“Doesnae that streetlight look like a halo?”

“What’s a halo?” I asked.

“Ye know, the sign of the enlightenment, like.”

“What’s enlightenment?”

“Like God’s grace.”

“Oh.”

I was going to ask what grace was, but I had a vague idea of its meaning and I didn’t want her to think I was stupid.

“In religious art, halos are those circles around Jesus’s heed.”

I suddenly got an urge to run into the middle of the field. She jumped into my arms and we stood there for a long time, just hugging. I became aware of the hot skin on her neck, our cold ears touching.

“Kiss me, I’m Scottish,” she said—a T-shirt we’d seen in town.

We breathed each other in. She touched my butt and I got an erection. She checked the grass but it was too dewy to roll around in. We kissed and rubbed against each other and time slipped away and a white police cruiser glided by, almost noiselessly, across the grass, shining its reflector on us, then politely,
Britishly,
carried on. We kissed some more until a little fox came up to us from behind the hedges, regarded us with a pragmatic leer, then trotted away, shaking its head, its tongue out, mocking us.

* * *

I woke up late the next day, found no one in the house. It was ten minutes before the show already and none of the troupe members had bothered to wake me. I rushed into my jacket and caught a whiff of Allison on it and remembered what Asmir had done, that motherfucker. I was gonna kill him. I checked and there was still luggage in all the rooms and miscellaneous clothes, debris from a hasty breakfast all over the kitchen, bread crumbs and cornflakes and smears of orange marmalade. There was Asmir’s boom box in the living room. If he was still in Edinburgh, he was mine. I dashed out without locking the front door behind me.

The day was soggy and I ran up the hill like a maniac, rage fueling my muscles. There were a lot of people out and I slalomed in between them, catching a shoulder here and there.

As I turned onto Albany my right shoe started to clap against the sidewalk. Unwilling to slow down, I hopped on my left foot and kicked my right foot sideways to see what had happened. The cheap sole had unglued itself and my heel was a-flap.

“Fuck!” I said and, off balance like that, crashed into a beefy man in front of me, bounced off his bulk, and bailed hard. In the nanosecond blur of being face-to-face, I recognized him.

Mustafa! Could it be?

“Sorry,” I said, trying to get up on all fours, but he just kept walking. By the time I was up and cupping the funny bone in my elbow, he was already around the corner.

“Mustafa!” I called after him, but he didn’t come back.

I hobbled into Venue 25 and went through the courtyard to the green room behind stage B, where I assumed the troupe was stalling the show until I got there. But as soon as I walked in I knew there wouldn’t be a show.

The young troupe members, sitting on sofas in their costumes, looked at me with petrified faces. A gasp went through the room and caught Branka’s attention. She was standing with her back to me near the entrance to the stage with Ramona and two men I’d never seen before. When she spun around her face made me tremble. She ran to me.

“Where were you?” she hissed and I thought she was going to hit me.

“At the house,” I said and looked at Ramona. “Nobody bothered to wake me up.”

Ramona turned away from me.

“Where are Bokal and Asmir? Where are the musicians?”

That’s when I realized that Asmir was long gone. They were all long gone.

I wanted to bash his head in for groping Allison when he knew I liked her, for saying he did this to help me understand how the world works, for lying to my face. I remembered how vulnerable he’d looked the previous night on that balcony and it made me even madder. Something inside me came to a boil, and without being able to release the pressure of it in front of this anguished woman, it all came out of my eyes.

“I don’t know where they are,” I choked out.

“My dick! You’re as thick as thieves.”

I wiped my eyes, my guts knotting.

“I. Don’t. Know.”

Her lips curled into a snarl. She grabbed my left sleeve and pointed me toward the sofas.

“Nobody knows anything,” she said. “Go sit down. We’ll get to the bottom of this.”

My friends scooched over and made some room for me in the corner, next to Omar.

“Fucking craziness,” he whispered, like it was all his fault.

“What happened?” I whispered back.

He looked toward his mother, who was now pacing from the stage entrance to where Ramona was talking to the two men, waiting for something, it seemed. One of them, a chinless blond, was writing something in a pocket notebook.

“Boro and I woke up this morning and everybody was gone except for Ramona. We thought you were with that chick and didn’t even check in your room,” Omar said.

“But they left their stuff behind.”

“I think to give themselves more time.”

“Fucking asshole.”

“Who?”

“Who do you think?”

“My mother doesn’t give a shit about him or Bokal. They didn’t come on
her
bus. It’s the musicians she vouched for, that she’s responsible for bringing back.”

Something in the way he phrased the sentence switched on the silent alarm inside of me.

“What about me and Ramona?”

“What about you and Ramona?”

“Well, she’s letting
us
go, right?”

“I know about Ramona. Her father made a deal or something.”

The rage in me turned into panic. All alarms blared.

“My father made a deal for
me,
” I said, almost crying again.

“I don’t know, man. Not with Branka, or I would know.”

My hands started to shake and I hid them under my knees, feigning cold.

“Where were you gonna go? To your uncle in America?”

I managed to nod.

“Man, you better do something quick. Those guys over there are from immigration. Mother called them and told them that some people ran away from the troupe to seek asylum.”

I couldn’t move, not even my eyes. They just stared ahead across the room and locked onto a blue sandbag next to the stage door, a doorstop. Every so often Branka’s blurry shape passed in front of it, pacing.

The stage door swung open then and a conservatively clad woman entered. Branka told Ramona to tell her that they found me. Ramona translated, pointing in my direction, and the woman looked at me. She had large, photosensitive glasses and bangs and looked a little like Joey Ramone. I tried to move but my legs felt wooden, my feet bolted to the floor.

Joey Ramone said something to the blond man and I heard the word
passport
. Omar heard it, too. I felt him lean slightly into me.

“If you let go of your passport now you’re as good as in Bosnia,” he whispered without moving his mouth.

“They recommend you take his passport if you want him to go back with the troupe,” Ramona said to Branka, and without a moment’s hesitation Branka started toward me.

That’s it.

My passport was in the front left pocket of my Levi’s jacket. My money was in a tobacco pouch in the right inside pocket. My name was Ismet. The sandbag was blue. Branka was coming. My hands were under my knees. My heart was beating in the tips of my fingers. My brain was churning. My legs were wooden. The room was silent. My throat was closed. Branka was coming. My armpits were damp. The room was silent. Branka was there. Her hand extended. Her mouth was moving. My throat was closed. My brain was churning. And I was flying. Flying above. My name was Ismet. My heart was not beating. I was looking down. At another Ismet. Whose heart
was beating. Whose feet were not wooden. Whose throat was not closed. My passport was in the front left pocket of his Levi’s jacket. My money was in a tobacco pouch in the right inside pocket. He knew this fact. Branka was there. Asking for my passport. With her moving mouth. My name was Ismet. He reached inside. Pulled out the money. His face screwed up. He dug deeper. Looking for the passport. In the wrong place. He stood up in panic. He looked around.
Where is your passport?
Branka was saying.
I left it in the room,
he was saying.
We’ll go with you to get it,
Branka was saying. The sandbag was blue. My name was Ismet. My passport was in the front left pocket of his Levi’s jacket and he didn’t give it up.

We were on Dundas Street. I was walking downhill, flanked by two open umbrellas and their owners. The purple and white one belonged to Branka. The simple black one belonged to the man with no chin.

My heel flapped as I walked and my shoe took on water. The rain was cold and my shoulders were hunched, no neck. Three times Branka offered to share her umbrella with me and three times I refused. “I like the rain,” I said. “My shoe broke,” I said in English. The man with no chin was stern.

“I can’t believe you don’t have your passport on you,” Branka said.

In front of the house. A flight of stairs down to the front door. I took it in one leap, removed my shoes, and left them there on the welcome mat. The two with umbrellas were still at street level.

“If you want you can wait here,” I said. “I’ll go bring it.” But Branka started her descent, her face suspicious.

The front door was unlocked and I ran in. I sprinted down the hallway and almost lost my balance because my right sock was soaked and it slid more dangerously on the polished hardwood. But
there were walls for balancing and I made it to my room, scrambled in, and shut the door. I locked it from the inside.

For a moment there was panic. I picked up my bag, put it down. I ran to the window, looked out, spun around, ran to the door. I grabbed at my hair, let it go. I heard footsteps. For a moment there was calm.

A knock on the door.

I put my Windbreaker on over my Levi’s jacket and climbed on the sill.

“I’m gonna change!” I yelled. “I’m all wet!”

I jumped into the courtyard in my socks.

I muddied my hands and knees, got on my own two feet, ducked under some pillowcases now sopping on the clothesline, and ran to the door leading to the vestibule. I clutched the doorknob and pulled and pulled and there was panic again because it wouldn’t budge. I pulled and pulled and looked around, gauging the height of the walls, but then I pushed and the door clicked open and I ran the width of the building to the front, stuck out my head and saw that no one was at the front door, picked up my shoes from the welcome mat in one sweeping move, and ascended the stairs to the street.

I ran on.

And on.

And there was a spring in my step and elation on my face despite the downpour, despite the equally wet socks now, despite what Asmir had done, what my father hadn’t, despite who all were left behind in hell, despite uncertainty about the future, the pull of the past, the disjointedness of the present. Despite fear. Despite love.

I ran on across the street with a shoe in each hand. A double-decker straight from a British postcard decelerated and came to a stop. I got on board and handed the driver a bunch of crumpled
notes. I climbed the stairs to the top deck, which was empty, went all the way to the back, and threw myself face-first on the floor.

The bus started to move. I lay there for a while, then flipped onto my back. I dropped the shoes over my head. My chest was heaving. My face was smiling. My right hand clutched the left front pocket of my jacket, felt the document inside. My left hand reached into my inside right pocket and squeezed the money pouch. With that I lost consciousness.

I awakened to the sound of foliage scraping the roof of the bus, and as soon as I realized where I was, my heart was a-thump.

WhatareyoudoingWhatareyoudoingWhatareyoudoingWhatareyoudoingWhatareyou

I raised my head, looked down the aisle, and immediately felt a swoon coming. I closed my eyes and leaned into the side of the seat to my right, folded my legs under me, and managed to push myself up and into it.

doingWhatareyoudoingWhat

Slowly, my personal darkness retreated ahead of reality and I was able to look around. Slivers of Edinburgh, made opaque by rain, turned in the frame of the window, one after the other. I couldn’t recognize anything. It was the price of freedom.

areyoudoingWhatareyoudoing

I hallucinated I was someone else, someone older to whom the inside of this bus wasn’t foreign, someone who knew where they were, where they were going, and how many stops it would take to get them there. It felt both good and unnerving, good because it had a calming effect on the body, unnerving because inside it I knew I wasn’t really me. I panicked and fumbled to get out my passport.
I opened it and looked at my photograph. Who was this pale kid? Why was his T-shirt neckband so stretched?